


(Best) Worst Mistake

by madameofmusic



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Check Please! Big Bang, M/M, Technically it has everyone but it's really just the main two, miscommunication trope, unnecessary angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 07:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8481544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madameofmusic/pseuds/madameofmusic
Summary: The flyer says “Samwell Department of Psychology, Graduate Level, Paid Research Opportunity, Romantic Couples Study." And then, underneath,"To better understand the psychology and connection differences between short-term partnerships and long-term partnerships.” It can’t be that hard to fake being a couple, right?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Best Worst Mistake from If/Then, the most DexNursey song I've ever heard. Idea from [ here](http://whiskeytangofrogman.tumblr.com/post/140472090933/lesbianrey-looks-like-the-perfect-opportunity).
> 
> Art by [Dani](http://anotherhedgehog.tumblr.com/), challenge by [these wonderful people](http://checkpleasebigbang.tumblr.com/).

They share a dorm Sophomore year, and it isn’t as terrible as Dex expected it to be, all things considered. Nursey’s gotten less pretentious since first semester freshman year, and Dex, for lack of a better word, has chilled out. _A lot_. Dex thinks it has to do with them finding their rhythm and learning when (and when not to) push each other’s buttons, and Nursey claims it’s because Dex could only withstand Nursey’s “witty and charming texting persona” for so long before he “gave in and admitted how awesome he was” over the summer. It’s probably a bit of both, if he really thinks about it. He doesn’t think about it for very long.

This, of course, can only last so long. Dex pinpoints what he mentally dubs “the beginning the end” the minute Nursey walks into their room with a flyer in one hand, a bag from Dex’s favourite takeout place in the other, and a devious grin on his face.

 

“I have the _greatest_ idea.” Nursey says, setting the bag from the Chinese restaurant off campus they like to eat at on cheat days on the kitchen counter. He thrusts the flyer at Dex, and then leans against the island, waiting for Dex to finish reading the paper.

The flyer says “Paid Research Opportunity” at the very top, which catches Dex’s eye. “I’m interested so far.” He says to Nursey, skimming over the rest of the paper. It doesn’t make much sense that way, and he slows down to read from the top for real.

“Samwell Department of Psychology, Graduate Level  
Paid Research Opportunity  
Romantic Couples Study”

Dex stops, and looks up at Nursey. “I don’t get it.”

Nursey waves a hand at him, excited grin still plastered on his face. “Keep reading.”

Dex rolls his eyes, but complies. The rest of the flyer states the purpose of the study ( _“to better understand the psychology and connection differences between short-term partnerships and long-term partnerships”_ ), and the rules ( _“18+ only, living together, Samwell students preferred”_ ). Dex finishes reading the description and then reads it again. Nursey starts setting out their dinner as Dex continues to read it over and over, confused.

“Is this for Chow and Farmer?” Dex asks, setting the paper down and pulling up a barstool. He grabs the container of lo mein, and begins shoveling it into his mouth with a fork.

Nursey, the asshole, picks up the fried rice and begins eating it with a set of chopsticks. He doesn’t drop a single grain, and manages to get more than a few grains at a time into his mouth. Dex hates him, a little bit. Whenever Nursey gives him shit for being unable to eat with chopsticks, Dex always reminds him that people who grew up on lobster chowder, mashed potatoes, and red meat don’t mesh well.

“No. It’s for us.”

Dex chokes, slamming his fork down as he tries to cover his mouth to prevent lo mein spewing over the counter. Nursey passes him a styrofoam cup, and Dex takes a long swig from it. “What?”

Nursey continues to eat calmly, like he hadn’t just said the most ridiculous thing since Bitty pronounced Betty Crocker brand cake mix illegal in the Haus. “It’s for us.” Dex stares at Nursey, and then reaches across the table to smack Nursey on the top of the head. “What the fuck dude?” Nursey rubs at his forehead, and glares at Dex.

“Just making sure I wasn’t having some fever dream where sensible, rational people have been replaced by loser roommates who aren’t making as sense.” Dex slides the paper towards Nursey, and taps at the second line. “We’re not dating.”

Nursey rolls his eyes, and huffs. “Duh. But look.” He points at each line as he speaks. “We’re 20. We live together. We’re students here. And, we both need the money.”

Dex arches an eyebrow. “Okay, first of all, _you_ have money.” It’s mostly true. Nursey has a black AmEx “for emergencies”, and he gets a yearly allowance that he spends on extra books and new hockey equipment, and god knows what else that made all of his several thousand dollar allowance disappear two weeks into first semester. But he doesn’t have a job, and Dex knows for a fact he’s hankering for a new computer since he dropped his Macbook in the lake and had to go back to using his old netbook. “Secondly, we’re not dating. What are we gonna do, pretend we’re in a relationship for money?”

Nursey just stares at him.

The bottom of Dex’s stomach falls out. “No.”

Nursey grins, slow and liquid. _“Yes.”_

“Oh my god, Nurse, we can’t just _lie-”_

“Yes we can!” Nursey jabs at the paper. “We’ve lived together for more than six months. We’re D-Partners.”

“But we’re not dating!” Dex protests, albeit weaker than before. Because the study is offering five hundred dollars a piece, and that’s two payments on his truck, with some to spare. He could put that money from his job into his student loans, and- Well, in short, it’s not a _terrible_ idea. Doesn’t make it a great one, though.

Nursey sighs. “That doesn’t matter. We can fake it.”

“What if they find out?”

Nursey shrugs. “We’ll figure it out then. But they won’t.” He says, and then holds out his hand. “You in?”

Dex huffs, and then shakes Nursey’s hand, flitting through the “secret D-Men handshake of awesomeness” Ransom and Holster made them learn earlier that year, citing that all D-Men who ended up with attic dibs knew it perfectly. “Fine.”

Nursey whoops, and takes his phone out to email the research department about their interest in the study, but not before passing Dex the container of coconut shrimp without even taking half of it like he normally did.

Dex takes a bite, and stares at Nursey as Nursey stares at his phone and types furiously. _This could work,_ Dex thinks, smiling as Nursey finishes the email and sends it off with a triumphant “A-ha!”

 

“This isn’t going to work.” Dex looks over at where Nursey is curled into a ball on a chair in the waiting area. His hands are wrapped around his knees, and his chin is tucked into his chest.

Dex snorts. “Now you’re getting cold feet?”

Nursey angles his head just enough to glare at Dex. “Shut up. I didn’t know the compatibility test was going to be in _person_. I thought it was going to be like, over the computer or something. What if they find out? What if we get _kicked out of-”_

Dex glares at him, getting Nursey to fall silent with the force of his annoyed stare. “Can you _shut the hell up._ They’ll definitely know we’re faking if you don’t keep your big mouth shut. Now stop worrying, and sit up straight. Use that acting class I know you took last semester to your advantage.”

Nursey colors, and grumbles something under his breath, but ultimately does as he’s told. He takes a deep breath, and then turns to Dex. “What do you think they’ll ask us? What if they split us up like in the movies where the criminals are lying and see if our stories match? What if-”

Dex sighs, and stares at Nursey. Nursey’s voice trails off, and then he frowns. “We should have figured out a backstory, that’s all I’m saying.”

Dex shrugs. “Just stick as close to the actual story of how we met as possible, and you won’t go wrong.”

Nursey narrows his eyes at Dex. “How do you know that’ll work?”

Dex grins. “I grew up with four siblings, and dozens of cousins. I know.”

Nursey seemed mollified. He leans back in the chair, uncurling from his tight ball, and stretches his legs out in front of him. “If we do get in trouble, I’ll take the blame for it.” His voice is calmer now, and quiet.

Dex looks down the hall, looking to see if anyone was coming yet, and then back at Nursey. “Why?”

“Because-” Nursey shrugs, gives him a smile that Dex would probably call rueful, if he was the type of person to call anything _rueful_. “You’re on a scholarship. I’ve got nothing to lose.”

Dex rolls his eyes again, but can’t help the smile the curls at the corners of his lips. “My knight in shining armor. Look, I doubt we’ll get caught. If anything, we won’t be included in the study. But if we do, we say it was a prank. Easy.”

Nursey nods, and opens his mouth to say something, but is interrupted by the voice of a cheery woman who appears suddenly at the entrance of the waiting area. “Are you Will Poindexter and Derek Nurse?”

They nod, and she smiles. “Good! Follow me, please.”

Nursey sends an uneasy look over to Dex, and then stands to follow her. “So what exactly are we gonna be doing? The paper didn’t say much.”

The woman smiles, and stops in front of a door. “Just some questions about your relationship. Nothing too bad, right?” She opens the door, and gestures them into it. Inside there’s a glass wall, and a few chairs on each side of a metal table.

“It looks like an interrogation room,” Dex mutters, grabbing a chair facing the glass. Nursey flops down next to him. The assistant hands them each a questionnaire and piece of paper, and tells them to fill it out. She takes them, and then tells the pair that the researchers will be in soon.

“This feels like a doctor’s appointment.” Dex mumbles, looking over to Nursey. “Do you think-” whatever Dex was about to ask gets cut off by the door opening once more. A man and a woman, both in pressed black suits, walk in and take the seats across from them.

They introduce themselves as the researchers, and Dex and Nursey both listen quietly. Dex resists the urge to mutter comments to Nursey, like he normally would in any other uncomfortable situation.

“Well, let’s start, shall we?” The woman who identified herself as Liza says. She reaches for her clipboard, and flips open the privacy top. “Full names?”

“Derek Malik Nurse.” Nursey says. Dex can feel his leg tapping in a gentle rhythm under the table.

“William James Poindexter.” Dex says, and ignores the look Nursey gives him, the look that he knows says _I didn’t know your middle name was James_ , a look that will give them away in a heartbeat.

“Good.” The woman says, scribbling that down. She asks for a few more basic information questions, and then the man, who until that point, had only grunted out a name, asks them how they got together.

Dex freezes. His throat closes up, they’re going to get caught and who _knows what will happen then, but it won’t be anything good_. Just as he’s opening his mouth, Nursey starts talking. “We met when we were freshman.” He nudges Dex under the table, and Dex looks over. Nursey smiles at him, reassuring, and Dex breathes.

“We’re both on the hockey team.” Dex says, looking back towards the researchers. “We play D. That’s uh-”

“Defense.” Nursey supplies. “We actually met on our tour of the school though. You could say it was love at first sight.”

Dex snorts. “Yeah, if that includes arguing the first six months we knew one another.” He grins at Nursey, and Nursey, thankfully, grins back. They stare at each other for a second, and then the man - Earl - clears his throat.

“So, how did you two get together though?” Dex’s smiles drops, and he gives Nursey a slightly-panicked _help_ look.

Nursey turns back to the man. “It was first semester. We uh, were arguing one time, about something stupid, like normal. I think it was about some play we’d done?, and then all of a sudden uh-” Nursey colors, visibly, and then smiles at Dex again. “We kissed, and everything made sense.” Nursey gives him the sappiest look Dex has ever seen on his face, and Dex is impressed at how good of an actor Nursey apparently is.

It’s not completely wrong. They hadn’t kissed. They had, however, started laughing, so hard that Jack came over to make sure they were okay, where he’d been in Coach Hall’s office behind a closed door. Past that, everything had been better. They got along more, and when they didn’t, they were able to see past their differences.

Dex still doesn’t know what changed that day, but something did. He’s glad for it.

The man nods, and writes something on his clipboard. “How long ago was that?”

Dex responds almost immediately, shocking himself as well as Nursey, if the look on his D-Partner’s face was anything to go by. “Almost a year.”

The woman smiles at them both. “And you are monogamous? No third partners? It’s not an open relationship, right?”

Dex coughs, feels his cheeks go red. “Yeah- yeah, of course.” He says, embarrassed at the idea of anything besides one partner, even though Shitty had explained over and over again about the idea of polyamory and open relationships and how there was no value judgement that should be placed on those ideas. Dex wasn’t against it for other people, by any means, but it wasn’t for him. He was a one partner kind of guy.

Nursey had mentioned before that he might be alright with dating someone polyamorous, and he couldn’t say for certain that he wasn’t polyamorous, but he was fairly certain he didn’t “have the capacity or the emotional flexibility to dedicate himself to more than one person at a time.” _Something like that_ , Dex thought.

“No he’s it for me.” Dex hears Nursey say, and Dex nods his head in agreement. Nursey’s it for him too, he starts to think, and then barely restrains himself from frowning at the idea of _Nursey_ being anything for him besides a roommate.

This study, the preparation they’d done, was already getting to his head.

“Excellent. And you are living together?” The woman asks, still scribbling on her clipboard.

They nod, and she murmurs a positive sound. “Good, good.” She flips the clipboard closed, and stands. “Well, it was nice to meet you both. We’ll be in touch within the next month.”

They each shake hands with the researchers again, and then show themselves out.

Once they’re out of the building, and in the car, Nursey speaks. “That wasn’t too bad, right?”

Dex grunts, but says nothing.

 

Nursey gets the email the following Tuesday. “Dex!” He shouts, from his side of the room, sitting straight up in bed. “We got in.”

Dex had curled himself up into a ball, the only thing showing from the cocoon he’d wrapped himself in to do his weekly code assignment was the top of his head, and the top edge of his laptop. “Got into what?” Were the muffled words from the pile.

“The study.” Dex hears Nursey get up from his bed, and then feels the whole of Nursey’s weight flop down on his bed. A phone was shoved into his face, and Dex sighs, saving his code and shutting his laptop to unearth himself from the blankets.

He reads over the email quickly once, and then again more slowly. “Oh.” He mumbles, frowning at the screen.

Apparently, their relationship was the perfect match for the study, and they team of researchers was excited to work with them. If they completed it, they’d get five hundred dollars. _Each_.

Dex’s jaw slowly drops, his eyes scanning that line over and over again. He looks up at Nursey, and grins. “Dude.”

Nursey grabs his phone back, and then rolls over on top of Dex, crushing him against the mattress in a hug. “Dude.” Nursey says back, leaning up just enough to grin back.

Dex laughs, and shoves him off. “Now we have to just convince a team of experienced researchers that we’ve not only been together for a year, but are still together.”

Nursey winks at him, goofily lascivious, and laughs as well. “It helps that I’m hot.”

Dex rolls his eyes, and curls back up to finish his homework. “Shut up, Nurse.”

 

That Friday, they were in the building once more. “What do you think we’ll have to do?” Nursey asks, knee pressed against Dex’s underneath the table in the small room. There were no researchers yet, and they’d been in there for ten minutes already. Nursey had gotten progressively more and more nervous as the minutes ticked by, and his normally cool persona was rapidly dissipating in favor of a crazy frenzy of questions.  “Do you think they’re watching us now? Do you think they’re gonna ask us more questions? What if they split us up like in movies and ask us questions but we don’t have the same movies? Do you think we can go to jail for lying in a study? What if-”

Dex claps a hand over his mouth, and sighs. “Look-” He feels Nursey’s tongue lather a wet stripe across his palm. “Dude what the fuck.” He levels Nursey a glare, but didn’t lift his hand, more afraid of Nursey’s incessant questioning than his spit. “One, stop talking about how this is a huge lie so loudly. That for _sure_ will get us kicked out.” He whispers. “Two, we’ll be fine. They said it was going to be a test, right? I’m good at tests, and you’re good at bullshitting stories.”

He took his hand off when he noticed the fervor had simmered down in Nursey’s eyes to more of a low boil, and less of a burning, evaporating mess. “I’m the king of bullshit.” Nursey says, nodding once.

Dex snorts. “That you are.”

They wait for another five minutes, before the same researchers from before came into the room. Liza launched into an explanation of what they were going to do, and recited the expectations and rules of the study at them once more.

It basically amounted to, as Dex understood it, them asking each other questions from a list in no particular order, and then staring at each other for a half an hour in complete silence. It was weird, but what in Dex’s life, at that precise moment, was _any_ bit normal?

They each got a copy of the list, and were told that they’d be watched from behind the glass, before Liza and Earl exited the room and left them alone.

Dex took the chair across from Nursey, and scanned over his list, before settling on one he liked. “What’s your dream house look like?”

Nursey hums, rocking back on his chair and propping his knee against the edge of the table. “I want a victorian style, with a big yard. An oak tree in the front yard, maybe a porch swing? Also, a sun room.”

Dex arches an eyebrow. “You’ve thought about this before.” He asks, not making it sound much like a question at all.

Nursey grins sheepishly. “Yeah. You?”

Dex resists the urge to say the cheesy “Anywhere you are” like he probably should have in a _romance study_ , and instead actually thinks about what he wants.

He’d grown up in a family of six in a house with three bedrooms, and two bathrooms, only one of which had a shower. He’d had a backyard with a weathered old fence, and an old, plastic play structure his dad had picked up for he and his siblings at a garage sale for ten dollars, during one the better years money-wise. He and his siblings would crawl all the way up, and peek into their neighbors backyards, pretending they were spies.

Dex taps his fingers on the table, smiling softly to himself. “I want somewhere up North, with a yard and bay windows. And trees to climb on.” He says, and then adds,. “And more than one working shower.”

Nursey laughs, having heard Dex gripe about trying to share a bathroom before school with two older sisters and a younger brother all trying to use it at once. Privacy, in the Poindexter family, was a luxury.

“Okay, next question?” Nursey says, and Dex nods. “What do you like most about me?” Nursey waggles his eyebrows at Dex, and winks.

Dex rolls his eyes, but can’t keep the smile off of his face. “Your eyes.” He says, looking straight at Nursey. It was true, too. Even before Dex figured out he was… decidedly not-straight, he’d liked Nursey’s eyes. They were a striking, olive green. “Me?”

Nursey shrugs. “Your hands. I could write poetry about the way your hands create music with the click of your keyboard.”

Dex flushes, and rolls his eyes so hard they feel like they’re falling out of his head. “Shut up, Nurse.” Dex looks back down to the paper, and picks the first question he sees. “Where do you see yourself in ten years?”

Nursey apparently had no inclinations about not being as cheesy as possible. “With you.” He says, giving Dex another overly-sappy, heartfelt look. “Of course.”

Dex ignores the way the look makes his stomach twist into knots, and answers his own question. “I want to work for Google. Maybe IBM. Next?”

Nursey stares at him for a few more seconds, lips twisting into not-quite-a-frown. “Okay. Um,” Nursey’s eyes flit down the paper, stopping about halfway down before he reads off another one. “How many kids do you want?”

Dex shrugs. “I never like, considered them. I don’t know if I…” He trails off, and looks at Nursey. A sudden image floods his mind, of he and Nursey linking hands with a small girl, brown hair tied in pigtails , and felt himself flood with _want_. “One.” He grunts.

Nursey gives him an odd look, and then shrugs. “Okay. Same, I guess. I’d be okay with whatever.”

Dex nods. He picks another question, something less serious this time, and they continue like that until Earl’s voice comes over the small PA system in the room, telling them to move onto the next part of the experiment now.

They push their chairs back from the table, and sit across from one another on the cold tile of the room, knees pressed together. Nursey leans forward, leaning his chin on his hands. “So we just stare at one another?”

Dex shrugs, copying his pose. “I guess.”

They were silent for not even a minute, before a smile flicked its way across Nursey’s face, and he chuckles low, under his breath. “This is weird, right?” He mumbles, near silently.

Dex’s chin jerks down in a nod. “For sure.” He whispers back.

Dex noticed something he hadn’t before a few minutes into this part of the experiment. They’d fallen back into silence after Nursey’s words, and the lack of sound pervaded, seeping into the way Dex felt, making the situation far more intimate than their surroundings of a metal table and beat up chairs, researches watching over them and making notes to themselves, provided.

He’d never had a reason to sit this close to Nursey. “You have flecks of brown in your eyes.” Dex murmurs, voice barely above a whisper. Anything louder seems out of place in the setting, as intimate as it is.

Nursey grins, and winks at him. “All the better to see you with.”

Dex snorts. “That doesn’t even make any sense, Derek.” The name Derek still doesn’t quite roll off his tongue, like wearing a shirt just a size too small. Derek is the guy he met at the Taddy tour. Derek goes to poetry readings and talks about literary influence on society at library group meetings while Dex sits a few feet away waiting for him to finish so they can go grab dinner. Derek’s life doesn’t include Dex, or Will, or even the occasional annoyed _Poindexter._

Nursey, on the other hand, spills at least one drink a week, and forgets to sleep sometimes, and rambles about Richard Siken when he drinks too much coffee and eats too little food. Nursey can send a puck his way without even sparing him a glance, and rarely makes him dive for it. Nursey, who never puts his laundry in his laundry basket and instead piles clothes next to it, who makes tea and forgets about, and has to reheat it at least twice before the mug is empty, is who Dex is familiar with.

Dex doesn’t know Derek. He knows Nursey.

Before they know it, the half hour of silence is over, and they’re being shuttled back into the lobby to fill out a questionnaire much like the first one they’d filled out. They hand them to the assistant, and are told they’re free to go.

The car ride back to their dorm is eerily silent, not even the radio allowed to play in the background. Every time Nursey looks like he’s about to say something, his jaw snaps shut again, and he grits his teeth.

The weird tension between them in broken by the time they get back from the Haus that night and crawl into their respective beds. Dex lays there for hours, unable to forget the image of a kid, _their kid_ , swinging by her hands in between them, and how Nursey hadn’t looked like he’d been lying when he said he’d want to be anywhere Dex was in ten years.

 

The study goes dormant for almost two weeks, and Dex nearly forgets in that time about how it felt to have Nursey so close, and how staring into his eyes and visually tracing the soft lines of his face felt so _right_.

“We have to go on a date.” Nursey says, opening the door to their dorm with a resounding thud. “Next weekend. Sunday, because we’re on a roadie until Saturday night.”

Dex grunts, only paying half attention to what Nursey is saying, more engrossed on a particularly tricky line of code. “That’s cool.” He mutters, leaning in closer to his monitor and frowning deeply.

Nursey sighs. “We also have to have sex on the interrogation table, and Chowder has to watch”

“Mmm,” Dex hums, clicking back and forth between two errors, trying to decide exactly where his pointer error is coming from.

“And the president is going to come to Samwell and declare straight marriage illegal.”

“How nice.”

Nursey waves a hand in front of Dex’s face, and leans down to look at his computer screen. He reaches over, and hits save, shutting Dex’s laptop to the sound of Dex protesting loudly. “I almost had it.” Dex groans, glaring at Nursey.

“You’ll remember it.” Nursey says, leaning against the desk. “Listen to me. We’re going on a date.”

Dex raises his eyebrows. “No we’re not? What the fuck?”

Nursey rolls his eyes. “For the study, dumbass.”

Dex’s mouth forms into an ‘oh’. “When’s that have to be?”

Nursey pulls out his phone from his coat pocket, and clicks open the email to show Dex. “This Sunday. Movie date.”

Dex looks over the email, and then up at Nursey. “Aren’t the movies like, the worst place to observe couples? You either sit quietly and watch the movie, or you make-out in the back row.”

Nursey huffs out a laugh, and shrugs. “Yeah, probably. But whatever. Free movie, right?” Nursey pockets his phone again, and pushes himself off of Dex’s desk to set his messenger bag down. “We should probably practice.”

Dex frowns, spins in his chair to look at Nursey. The other seems to be pointedly avoiding looking at him, meticulously unloading his bag and putting his books back on his shelf in alphabetical order. “Practice watching a movie?”

Nursey shrugs again. “More like practice a movie date. Figure out all the little fiddly bits, you know? So we can make it really convincing. I mean, if we were really together, we would have done this a lot, right?”

Dex frowns. “I guess.”

Nursey slides the last book into place and turns around. His expression is carefully blank. “After you’re done with that, wanna watch something?”

Dex gnaws on the inside of his lip, trying to figure his roommate out. Normally, Nursey is an open book. Every expression plays on his features like little kids on the playground, and Dex finds it easy to read him. But today, his carefully maintained chill he displays for everyone else is blocking Dex out too. It makes Dex feel some kind of way, but he’s not sure what that exactly might be.

“Sure.” Dex says finally, and then turns back to his computer. “Let me just fix this bug.”

 

An hour later, they’re curled up on Nursey’s bed, backs pressed to the wall, a very careful separation between them, the third Harry Potter movie playing in the background.

“I look _nothing_ like Ron Weasley.” Dex asserts for the third time in half an hour as Nursey laughs at him. “My hair’s lighter, and I have more freckles.”

Nursey grins at him, not even bothering to pay attention to Dex, finding chirping him far more interesting. “You are basically Ron Weasley, but American. And Irish instead of English.”

“Irish- _American,_ thank you. And besides, Ron has-” Dex turns his head away from the screen, and finds his face much closer to Nursey then he means it to be. “Uh.”

Nursey stares at him, and every word Dex has ever known in his life runs away from him. “Dex,” Nursey whispers, voice shakier than it has any right to be.

“Nurse,” Dex whispers back. Nursey’s hand lifts in an aborted motion, and he clears his throat awkwardly.

“So does that make Chowder Harry?” Nursey asks, looking away from Dex and back at the movie, still shaky, but different enough to break the weird tension that’s been coming back now and again ever since that day in early semester.

Dex breathes, and then laughs, louder than he should and obviously fake. “Only if you’re Hermione.” He says, resisting the urge to tuck his knees close to his chest and curl up into a ball.

Nursey shrugs next to him. “Of course.” They ignore the implications of what Nursey being the Hermione to Dex’s Ron means, and chirp each other about being the characters until the tension is gone.

Halfway through their second movie of the night, when Nursey wraps an arm around Dex’s shoulder, Dex says nothing.

Instead, he buries closer, tugging the blanket tight around them, and resting his head on Nursey’s shoulder.

 

They meet Earl at the movie theatre the following Sunday morning. Earl tells them he’ll be a few rows behind them, and not to worry, like having someone watch a date is completely normal and not at all insanely weird and uncomfortable.

Dex is sitting ramrod straight in his seat, fingers tapping disjointed rhythms on the armrests on either side of him. He’s still nervous, even though since that first night, they’ve had practice dates every night they could, so much so that they stop feeling like practice and start just feeling like a Thing he and Nursey do. Nursey is tapping away on his phone, on what looks like a word document. Nursey puts the phone away when the theatre darkens, and wraps an arm around him.  

He makes like he’s pressing a kiss to Dex’s temple. “Relax, like we practiced. I got you.” He whispers, and then leans back, squeezing Dex’s shoulder. Dex’s head drops onto Nursey’s shoulder, and he sighs. “Okay.” He whispers back.

They settle back as the previews start, Nursey squeezing Dex’s shoulder every time it gets to be too much for Dex and he starts to tense up again.

Dex doesn’t pay much attention to what’s on the screen. Nursey’d put his other hand on Dex’s knee, and was rubbing small, soft circles into the denim of his jeans. It was simultaneously distracting and comforting. Dex, without thinking, reached down and linked his fingers through Nursey’s. Nursey glances at him out of the corner of his eye, and Dex shrugs just enough to get the point across that he doesn’t know, but that it feels right.

Or, rather, that it was probably the least of what Earl three rows back expected of them. Nursey turned from rubbing circles into Dex’s jeans to tracing the lines of Dex’s thumb with his own. Nursey’s hands were warm, and soft, and Dex found himself suddenly, unexplainably self-conscious about the rough calluses at the base of every finger, and the scars that crisscrossed his knuckles from years of working on boats and in the family hardware store.

The rest of the movie had them shifting closer and closer together, until by the end of the movie, Dex’s chin was tucked comfortably under Nursey’s chin, and his back was half pressed against Nursey’s chest. Dex send a silent prayer to the gods for armrests that tuck back against the chairs.

Dex stands at the credits, and then, without thinking, offers Nursey his hand. Nursey didn’t hesitate before taking it, and standing as well. They found Earl in the parking lot, and filled out the same survey they’d already filled out three times before. They bid him a good rest of the night, and left in Dex’s truck.

Their hands remain linked all the way back to the Haus.

 

The Haus kitchen on team dinner that night went quiet when they walked in. Not one single person was looking at them. They were all silent, staring either at their place settings, or somewhere off in the distance. Nursey and Dex had heard the noise of excited chatter when they’d walked in, and the silence was abrupt and unnatural.

Nursey looks at Dex and mouths _what the fuck_ , and Dex nods in agreement. “Hey.” Nursey says, taking his normal seat. Tango was sitting in Dex’s normal spot across from Nursey, so Dex took Whiskey’s spot next to Nursey.

The team resumed talking, albeit stiffer and quieter than before. It was one of the rare nights that both Jack _and_ Shitty were over, both of their schedules matching up with that of the SMH team on account of the Monday holiday the next day. Normally Dex was perfectly happy to see both of them, but Jack had booked it to the kitchen as soon as they walked into the living-room-turned-dining-room, and Shitty was engaged in silent conversation via eyebrow with Lardo.

“Hey guys! How was your day? I hope it was super ‘Swawesome, and maybe you want to tell us about it? Because that could be fun?” Chowder says, smile equally blinding and uneasy.

Nursey arches an eyebrow, and knocks his knee against Dex’s under the table. “It was fine.” Dex says, and shrugs. “We went to the movies?”

“Oh? What did you guys see?” Ransom asks, leaning forward over the table. He looked less curious and more analytical. It was…. A bit terrifying, if Dex was being honest.

“The new Marvel movie. S’alright.” Nursey says.

At that moment, Bitty popped his head around the corner of the archway that led from the living room to the kitchen. “Should be ready in just a second. Lardo, Shitty, wanna come help carry all the food out?”

The pair rose and booked it to the kitchen as fast as Jack had. All four came out a few moments later, looking like they hadn’t just had a secret meeting.

Dex and Nursey shared confused glances, and looked at the rest of the members around the table. Everyone was talking amongst themselves, and they caught occasional glances in between quiet words.

Dinner got less quiet as they all clambered to recount Bitty’s game-winning goal the day before to Jack and Shitty who hadn’t been able to make it.

Afterwards, Shitty pulled out a bottle of Grey Goose from his bag, and grinned. “How’s about a game?”

Everyone assents, and clears the table and all the dishes out of the living room to form a large circle on the living room’s hardwood floor. Alcohol appeared seemingly out of the woodwork, bottles being passed around from hand to hand, and beer cans pulled out of thin air, or much more likely, from the beer fridge downstairs. Someone suggests truth or dare, and Dex knew acutely, somehow, that this wouldn’t end well for at least one person in the room. Truth or Dare never did.

It started rather tame, the questions silly and meaningless as no one was quite drunk enough to be brave and ask anything hard-hitting or revealing.

And then, it happened. The bottle they were using to choose who went next landed on Dex, and it was Chowder’s turn to ask the question.

“Dex? Truth or Dare.”

Dex considers it for a second, and decides he isn’t drunk enough to complete any dares. “Truth.”

“Are you and Nursey dating?”

The room fell so quiet, Dex swore he could hear his own heartbeat. “What?” He finally chokes out, sharing a panicked look with Nursey who was two people right of him.

Chowder gnaws on his lip, and looks between he and Nursey before speaking again. “Well, Cait and I went to the movies today? And the only one that was close to when we got there was the new Marvel movie?”

_Oh no._ “And we maybe kind of, sort of, uhm…”

“Spit it out, C.” Nursey said, frowning at the goalie.

“ _WekindofsawyouandNurseyonadate_?” Chowder squeaks out, and then claps his hands over his mouth. “I’m so sorry! I accidentally told everyone when I got back, and they didn’t believe me at first but they do now and it’s really okay if you’re dating, because we accept you of course, but why didn’t you tell us? Did you not trust us, or maybe you wanted to keep it a secret I’m so sorry-”

“Chowder, stop.” Dex says, and then laughs. “We’re not dating.”

Chowder frowns. “But I saw you?”

Dex shoves his shaking hands together, and barks out another laugh as he rolls his eyes. “Oh, you caught us. We’ve been secret boyfriends since forever. Whoops.”

Shitty, visiting for the first possible weekend in months, and therefore making it the worst possible time for this to happen, crawls drunkenly over and lays a hand on each of their shoulders. “Thank you for trusting us with this moment.” Nursey stifles a snort, and Dex bites the inside of his lip to keep from laughing at Shitty’s Serious Business face.

Bitty dabs at his eyes, sniffling dramatically (and drunkenly), and then stands. “Lord. this calls for a celebration. I have some leftover blueberry pie from this afternoon, I’ll go get it.” Nursey and Dex share a look, and then stand in unison.

“We’re gonna head out.” Nursey says, and they exit to the whoops and hollers of “get it!” from their team.

They’re silent as they walk back to the dorm, almost all the way home before Dex stops, and shoves his still shaking hands into his pockets. “Fuck.”

Nursey stops as well, and then pulls him into a rough hug. “Yeah.”

 

The entire team knows by practice Tuesday. Dex gets a text from Shitty telling him that he’s glad he’s able to accept himself after growing up in such a homophobic environment, that he’s proud, and that Shitty is there if he needs to talk. Ransom and Holster show up to their dorm room and give them a talk about how they should try their best not to let it affect their performance. Bitty bakes them a congratulations pie.

 

Dex wants to scream after the fourth “congrats on finally getting your shit together” from a teammate. “We aren’t even actually dating!” He says that afternoon, practically throwing his book bag on his bed and kicking a stray pillow across the room.

Nursey looks up from where he’s scribbling in his journal. “Dude, chill.” Dex glares at him, and throws another pillow at Nursey.

“Don’t tell me to chill.” He says, still glaring.

Nursey shuts his book and pats the bed beside him. “C’mere. We’re watching shitty reality TV until you feel better.”

Dex, already walking across the room, protests. “I have homework.” Computer science is the last thing he wants to do right now, and a session of making fun of MTV shows sounds a million times better than trying to fight with code while his mind is everywhere else.

Nursey opens his laptop, and Dex settles down onto the bed. He steals Nursey’s blanket from the foot of his bed, and wraps it around their shoulders. Nursey’s warmth is familiar, and Dex feels the anger, the frustration from that day leak out of him like helium from a popped balloon.

They get through a few episodes, Dex making quiet, slightly disparaging comments under his breath that make Nursey laugh.

“Hey, Dex?” Nursey says, an hour in. Dex looks up at him, and sucks in a quiet breath of air at how close they are.

Until their practice dates, there was always an unspoken rule about space. They’d share a blanket, and their arms would brush occasionally, but no closer than that. Now, Dex’s body’s pressed inch for inch into Nursey’s, and when he turns his head, he can feel Nursey’s breath mingling with his own.

“Yeah?” He whispers.

Nursey stares at him for a split second, and then leans down until their lips are bare millimeters apart. Dex isn’t sure who starts it, but in that moment, he couldn’t have cared less, as their lips meet and something inside him settles, warm and solid. Nursey tastes like black coffee, and the cologne he wears is smoky and rich. Dex’s eyes flutter closed, and he presses closer. His hand comes up to cup Nursey’s cheek, the tips of his fingers just barely brushing the soft curls of Nursey’s hair.

Nursey pulls back, giving Dex a hazy look. They stare at each other for a few sweet, unbroken moments. Then, Nursey’s eyes widen, and he pulls back. He shuts his laptop, and rolls off the bed faster than Dex could even sit up and figure out what he was doing.

“I-”

“Nurse-” Dex starts at the same time, and then stamps down his rising panic. “You go first.”

“I need to go.” Nursey says, promptly grabbing his bag and whisking his way out of the dorm room.

Dex pulls his knees to his chest, staring at the still cracked door from Nursey’s hasty departure, and bites down on his lip hard enough to make sure he doesn’t cry.

 

The next week was Thanksgiving break. Nursey, who’d previously planned to come up to Maine for Thanksgiving, texted him that his mom had sent him a ticket to Cancun, and that he was going to go there instead and that he was sorry, really.

Dex felt hollow, and he wasn’t sure why. Nursey’s parents were flakey and demanding, and it could be completely plausible that Nurse really was going to Cancún for Thanksgiving, but something in his brain knew that he wasn’t, that he was actually going to hide in his Manhattan house until Thanksgiving was over, and then fly down to Boston.

Dex spent Thanksgiving in a haze, fending off questions about him being okay by feigning coming down with a cold. His family accepted easily enough, told him to make sure to eat a lot and rest when he could.

Every time they asked about Nursey, he gave them a non-committal answer, or a shrug, anything to keep himself from saying that he thought, _just maybe, they were falling in love, and he couldn’t stop it, and Nursey didn’t_ want _it._

 

They had one more meeting after Thanksgiving with the researchers, right before finals week. This one was the first meeting apart. They were split into separate rooms, and given a paper that said “Weaknesses (Self)” on one side, and “Strengths (Partner’s)” on the other.

Dex stares at it for a long time before filling it out. He didn’t understand the point of this paper, didn’t understand why or how he’d fallen in… something, with Nursey, and why it had happened at all. He wishes, ruefully, as he writes down “stubbornness” on the weaknesses side, and “good writer” on the other side, that they’d never done this study in the first place.

Nursey hadn’t texted him all break, and hadn’t looked at him since that fateful night a couple weeks ago now. The team was starting to give them pitying glances, and Bitty had offered his floor to Dex if he wanted to get away from Nursey for a night, since they lived together and all and how _awkward_ must that be.

He’d declines, but thanks Bitty anyway. It doesn’t end up mattering, because Nursey doesn’t come home until two or three in the morning, sneaking into their dorm almost quietly enough that Dex couldn’t have heard it if he wasn’t already looking for it. And then, when Dex wakes up in the morning, Nurse is gone, already headed off to practice, or to class, never stopping long enough to even look Dex in the eyes.

Nursey’s gone when Dex finishes, and Dex finds that he’s glad. He doesn’t think he could look at Nursey after that last questionnaire asking him how much and how strongly he felt about Nursey and their relationship.

 

Dex texts him on Christmas morning, wishing him a Merry Christmas. He doesn’t get an answer.

Dex calls him on New Year’s, a little inebriated, and it goes to voicemail.

By the time they get back to school, Dex is more than a little pissed.

The plan is that Dex would pick Nursey up on his drive back to Samwell, and then they’d drive back together. Dex texts Nursey one last time, a simple “am I still picking you up?”

He gets a response a few hours later, when he’s already on the road. “No, thanks”, was all it read. Dex’s eyes scanned it over a few times, hand slowly clenching around his phone. He took a deep breath, and set it back on the seat, carefully.

_How_ dare _Derek Nurse_ , Dex thinks. _He spends the majority of freshman year telling me that I need to express my emotions, and that I’m an uptight asshole, and then he runs off after we kiss-_

Dex grips the wheel tight, and stews the rest of the five hour drive back to Samwell.

 

Dex arrives at his dorm, fuming. Nursey’s stuff is scattered all over his bed, falling off onto the floor in messy piles of shit, ninety percent of which Dex doesn’t even understand why he brought home in the first place.

His hand twitches towards his phone, to ask Nurse where he is. _I don’t care_ , he thinks to himself, pulling his phone out and turning it off for good measure. He stomps around the room as he folds his stuff and slams it into his dresser drawers. He gives Nursey’s empty duffle bag a kick as he passes by, and glares viciously when all it does is dent into the side a few inches.

By the time he’s done unpacking, he’s not any happier. He’s still thinking poisonous thoughts to himself, and occasionally muttering under his breath. Nurse still hadn’t returned by the time Dex was done.

Dex gives a glare to Nursey’s side of the room, and then starts his walk over to the Haus. The chilly January air doesn’t cool his temper either, even though he left his windbreaker in the room and only realized halfway through his walk, and by the time he reaches the front door, he’s freezing cold, covered in fallen snow, and _mad_.

Nursey’s in the kitchen, laughing at something Chowder is saying. Dex looms in the doorway for a second, and stares at the scene in front of him. Chowder is gesturing wildly, his voice growing higher and higher as he speaks. Nurse has a mug full of some steaming liquid, and he’s smiling in that unfairly attractive way of his.

Nurse finally looks away for a second, and Dex swears he looks terrified. Dex’s cheeks are burning, and Dex knows for a fact his body is one long, tense line. “Dex, hey.” Nursey says, setting his mug on the counter and stepping towards him. “Sorry I didn’t call you sooner about the ride, man.”

Dex’s eyes narrow. Chowder looks between them, perplexed. “It’s fine.” He grits out. Nursey gnaws on his lip, and then picks his mug up again before exiting the kitchen, muttering something about going to talk to Ransom and Holster.

“Dex-” Chowder starts, but of cut off by Bitty entering the kitchen, in the middle of a phone conversation with Jack.

Dex looks at Chowder, then shakes his head. He mouths _I’m gonna go_ , and then turns around and strides out of the Haus once more, skin not even warm yet as he steps out of the door.

 

He’s in his dorm room, laptop blasting old rock, when someone knocks on the door. “Go away, Nurse.” He calls, slumping further down in his desk chair and deleting a line of code more viciously than he needed to.

“Not Nursey.” Dex frowns, and saves his work, before reaching over to unlock the door and pull it open. It’s Bitty, holding a pie, and looking worried. “Hi. Heard you didn’t get any pie earlier, and I thought I’d bring one over for you.”

Dex accepts the tin, and sets it on his desk. “Thanks.”

Bitty stands in the doorway, rocking back and forth on his heels, and leveling his worried look on Dex’s hunched over form. Dex sighs, and then pushes himself back from his desk. “Come in.”

Bitty steps fully into the room, and shuts the door behind him. Dex folds his hands in his lap, and watches as Bitty looks around the room, eyes flitting between Dex’s muscle car poster from high school, and Nursey’s lame pin-up inspirational quotes. “Y’all got one of the nicer rooms. It’s big.”

Dex grunts, begins picking at his nails. “Sure.”

Bitty sighs. “Did you and Nursey break up?”

Dex looks up at Bitty, and sighs again. “We weren’t ever together.”

Bitty frowns. “But Chowder-”

“-Saw an experiment we were part of, and misinterpreted it. There’s nothing going on between Nursey and I. He’s an asshole.”

Bitty looks like he doesn’t believe a word Dex is saying. “Mhm.” He mumbles, taking a seat on the edge of Dex’s bed. “And here we all thought you two were getting along.”

Dex shrugs, and turns back to his computer. “Me too,” he mumbles. Even to himself, he sounds hollow, worn-out, and a little sad.

Bitty shifts, making the bed creak. “I see.”

Dex types away at his computer, biting the inside of his cheek raw as he glares at his computer screen. “It’s fine.”

Suddenly, Bitty is right next to him, setting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not.” He says, looking at Dex with more sadness than Dex thinks the situation warrants. Nothing _real_ even happened between him and Nursey. “But it will be. Give it time.”

Dex sucks in a breath, feels his chest get tight. “Sure.”

Bitty nods, and then opens the door. “You know, my door’s always open if you need someone to talk to.”

Dex breaks away, and hunches over in his seat as he starts to type. “Got it. Thanks for the pie.”

Bitty gives him a small smile, and leaves, closing the door behind him.

 

Nurse doesn’t get back until one in the morning, well after Dex usually goes to bed. Dex is still awake, curled up on his side in bed, trying desperately for sleep, but it’s not coming. He hears Nursey change into his pajamas, and curse as he drops something on the floor.

Nursey stops, and Dex can feel him staring. “Will?” Nursey’s voice is subdued, but still too loud for the tense silence of the room. Nursey knows he’s awake. He stays silent.

Nursey crawls into bed, and Dex falls asleep.

They don’t talk.

 

“You need to talk to him.” Ransom and Holster corner him a week later.

“You guys aren’t connecting on the ice. We can’t afford to let personal drama ruin what we’ve got going for us here.” Holster frowns at him. “We’ve been having a good season.”

Ransom nods in agreement. “But also,” he starts, flashing Holster a look. “We care about you, as your friends. You need to talk to Nursey.”

Dex huffs, and glances across the room to where Nursey is engaged in a conversation with Ollie or Wicks, he’s not sure which one. He’s pretty certain they’re probably interchangeable anyway. “Sure.”

Ransom claps him on the shoulder, smiles wide. “Cool. We’re here for you.”

“Got your back, bro.” Holster says, holding out his hand for a fist bump. Dex gives it to him, and turns back to changing. He’s not planning on talking to Nursey first, no way in _hell_ . Nursey stopped talking to _him_ over break, not the other way around. It’s not Dex’s fault Nursey’s being a shithead.

Dex shoves his gear in his duffle, and stares down at his bench for a second, collecting himself. Any extended thought about Nursey throws him into one of two things: absolute rage, or sadness so much he chokes on the taste of it. It’s getting annoying, and he doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with that a half an hour before his calculus class starts.

Nursey doesn’t give him the chance to avoid talking, though. As soon as Dex is out of the locker room, Nurse falls into step with him. “We need to chat.”

Dex side-eyes him and speeds up. “No we don’t.”

Nursey easily keeps up, hands shoved in his pocket, looking to all the world like he’s just having a nice conversation with a fellow teammate, and not someone who he kissed and then ghosted on like a douchebag. “We really do.”

Dex turns the corner into a more secluded part of Faber, and then spins on Nursey. “What’s there to talk about, Nurse? You kissed me, and obviously didn’t feel the same way about me as I do you, and fucked off. Whatever. Leave me alone, I’ll get over it.”

“Feel-” Nurse starts, but Dex begins walking again, hands clenched into tight balls in his pockets, shoulders rigid.

“Leave it alone Nurse. It doesn’t matter now.” Dex hears Nursey mutter something, but he doesn’t care enough to find out what. If he could, if he was so lucky as to be able to shove every feeling he’d ever felt about Derek Nurse into a closet, he would. But he can’t, and doesn’t feel like making those feelings any worse than they already are.

 

When Dex gets home that night, way later than he wanted to and practically dead on his feet from hiding out in the library, Nurse is sitting on his bed, holding an envelope. Dex had been kicked out, at midnight by the librarian. He was hoping Nurse would either be asleep, or gone, when he came back. Not sitting on Dex’s bed, waiting up like a disappointed mother.

“Fuck, are we really gonna do this right now?” Dex asked, dropping his bag onto his desk chair, and turning to face Nurse.

“We got the results of the study. They sent us a copy of our last test, along with the check.”

Dex sighed. “So cash it, and get me my part whenever you can. Whatever.” He said, leaning against his dresser.

Nursey shakes his head. He plays with the corner of the envelope, and then pulls out a piece of paper. “Dex is hard-headed, and he doesn’t relent easy. He has a temper, and a short fuse, and any little thing on any given day can get him ranting.”

“Why are you reading it?” Dex is tired, and he doesn’t want to hear Nursey detailing everything he found as a flaw during the test. “This can wait.”

“No, it can’t. Just- listen.” Nurse clears his throat, and then begins reading again. “Dex is hard-headed, but he’s loyal, fiercely so. He cares about everyone he meets more than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. He’s intelligent, capable, and most importantly, he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Dex is floored. “You didn’t write that.”

Nursey nods. “I did. I would have written more, but I thought I’d just be repeating myself.” He smiles, just barely, at Dex. “There’s only so many ways you can say someone is the most amazing person you’ve ever met before it sounds like bragging.”

Dex crosses the room in a heartbeat, and kneels between Nursey’s legs. “I-”

Nursey closes his eyes. “I was in love with you first, you know. You _hated_ me last year, but I was-” He grins, but it’s a little sad. “-am, in love with you. You’re amazing, and I was scared.”

“Scared of what?” Dex whispered, hand coming up in an aborted move to cup Nursey’s cheek.

“Scared of ruining what we already had. Scared that I’d be too much for you, that you didn’t feel as… _strongly_ , as I did.” Nursey opens his eyes, and then shrugs. “Scared of what would happen next, I guess.”

Dex settles his hand on Nursey’s thigh, and then leans up, until he’s inches away from Nursey’s face. “I can tell you what would have happened next.” He murmurs, thumb stroking across Nursey’s leg in wide strokes.

Nursey sucks in a breath of air between his teeth, but doesn’t move. “Yeah? What’s that?”

Dex closes the gap, pressing his lips to Nursey’s. His hands come up to cradle Nursey’s face, and Nursey’s hands wrap around the back of Dex’s head. They kiss for a moment that feels like a lifetime, and then Dex breaks away. “That. That, and I would have told you that I loved you too.”

Nursey laughs, a little watery. “Guess I should have waited.” He stares at Dex like Dex is the best thing he’s ever seen, and Dex can’t even argue because he’s one hundred and ten percent certain he has the same expression on his face. It hits him, with sudden clarity, that they’re gonna be _good_ together.

Dex grins. “Guess so,” he says, before pulling Nursey into another kiss.

 

It’s a few months later, after the finals (they get so _so_ close, again, but it hurts less this time when they don’t win), but weeks before graduation still, when Nursey reads what Dex wrote about him. They’re curled up on the porch swing on the back deck that Jack installed for Bitty a month prior. The sounds of Mario Kart trickle in from the screen door, intermingling with conversation and frustrated yelling from the entirety of the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team (and some of the Falconers) crammed inside.

They’d been on a trade-off rotation with Chowder, until Farmer showed up with March and April, and they’d decided going outside was a better option than having their asses individually handed to them by the trio of terror, thus dubbed by the SMH for being so indomitable at any Nintendo game.

“It’s not very good.” Dex holds the results to their test to his chest, paper slightly rumpled from where it had been underneath Dex’s bed since January. “And I was mad when I wrote it.”

Nursey laughs, and tugs on the paper lightly. “Just read it, Poindexter. It’s not like I’m not going to be in love with you after because you didn’t write me a damn sonnet.”

Dex flushes when Nursey says _in love_ , like they haven’t spent the last four months trading “I love you”s every time they got the chance. “Fine. I’m not a writer though, so you better not be expecting anything poetic.”

Dex scans it over, and groans. “Under weaknesses, I put ‘is kind of a dick. Doesn’t know when to let things go.’ Sorry.”

Nursey snorts, still grinning. “Perfect. Continue.”

Dex rolls his eyes, but presses a quick kiss to Nursey’s temple. “Under strengths, I put ‘good writer. Doesn’t put up with bullshit. Has a nice ass.’”

Nursey starts laughing in full now. “You did _not_.”

Dex shakes his head, and folds the paper back up. “Nah. I just added that last part. S’true though. Don’t tell Ransom or Bitty, but you have the nicest ass on the team.”

“You’re biased.” Nursey turns just enough to kiss him, and then pulls back. “You have a nice ass, too.”

They lay there for a few more seconds, occasional half-laughs bubbling out of Nursey, mixing with the raucous sound from inside.

“Hey,” Nursey turns his body until he’s sitting, facing Dex fully instead of wedged up next to him. He cups Dex’s face, and presses a kiss to his lips. “I can’t believe I got paid five hundred bucks to figure out I was in love with you.”

Dex snorts. “I can’t believe it took a thousand bucks for us to get our shit together.” Nursey grins, and then tucks himself back up next to Dex, and kicks his feet just enough to get the swing moving again.

They sit in silence, Dex’s arm wrapped around Nursey’s shoulder, and it’s _good_. They’re good, and Dex is… happy. They both are.

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, the hugest, hugest thank you to Dani, the wonderful artist I got to work with. Dani was so understanding about how timely (or really, not) that I was about this. I'm so thankful that Dani drew such great art. You can follow [here](http://anotherhedgehog.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Second of all, shoutout to the big bang coordinators. Thanks for putting on such a great event, and here's to hoping it goes on again next year! 
> 
> Finally, I hope you all enjoyed, and thanks for reading! 
> 
>  
> 
> [my tumblr](http://whiskeytangofrogman.tumblr.com/)


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